step into this
by spencer99mirror
Summary: "I was out on patrol in Star City one night, and I came across Bart. He was helping himself to a free meal." [gen]


You're hunched inside a frayed red sweatshirt worn shiny at the elbows, and you're staring at a couple seated at an outdoor restaurant table. The woman stands up and you watch her lips move. Blah blah blah _Phil_ , more words you don't get and couldn't care less about.

The man stands and gestures emphatically. She shakes her head. He gestures again, this time to the street, shoulders slumping in resignation. _At least let me call you a cab._ Your gaze falls to the food on the table. Mostly untouched, the man's food is closest to you; you're separated only by a waist-high, wrought iron fence. You shift from foot to foot, tug your cuffs down over your knobby wrists and tuck your hands into the sweatshirt's pouch pocket. Phil's date kisses him. He puts his arm around her waist, leads her to the curb and starts trying to hail a cab.

The clammy night air sucks at your limbs when you finally force them into activity. Every movement takes too much thought.

A cab pulls to the curb as you grip the top rail of the fence, palms moist with cold sweat, and swing yourself over in a muscle-memory motion. You land on the balls of your feet and stumble, but manage to catch yourself with no noise other than the scuff of rubber soles against weathered cobblestone. Your hand is stretched out over Phil's untouched hamburger when he turns and spots you. The smile fades from his face and he opens his mouth in an indignant yell.

You seize the food, cram it into your front pocket, and heave yourself over the railing again with a grunt, catch yourself just before you fall on your face, and take off in a run down the alley. Every time your paper-thin sneaker sole hits pavement it jars through you. End of the alley, overflowing trash cans, get a foot up on a dented metal lid and seize the chain-link fence. The metal bites into your fingers and you grit your teeth and try to ignore your pulse pounding in your head. Slam the toes of your sneakers into the gaps in the fence and climb, try not to get hooked on the jagged ends of the metal on top. Phil, almost reached the fence now, _not good,_ and his face is red with anger.

You dredge up the last bits of residual energy your body's stashed away and put on a burst of speed. It's pathetic. You don't even trust yourself to have enough time to look over your shoulder and smirk at Phil, probably frozen with his mouth open, so you keep running and pray to whatever omnipotent being is out there that you don't trip over your own two feet. The speed burst stutters out before the end of the alley and leaves you off-balance and disoriented; your foot snags on a sagging trash bag and it rips. The stink of rotting garbage is overpowering and you'd vomit if there was anything in your stomach. Behind you, Phil is yelling, the chain-link fence shuddering loudly as he climbs it.

A car pulls up on the street right in front of you and you jerk to a stop and stare at it. Something in your head is screaming at you but the words are too muffled to make out. "Kid?" the driver asks, ducking his head and peering out at you through the open window. He looks familiar. "You okay, kid?"

Phil shouts something behind you. Probably, _grab him_. Or, _don't let him get away_. You stare at the stranger, who stares back, eyes unreadable behind dark shades. Then the passenger door swings open. He says, "Get in. I'll give you a ride."

You think it's probably a bad idea, but you do it anyway. You slide into the car, grease-stained jeans rasping over smooth leather seats, and slam the door as Phil jogs closer. The car peels away from the curb with a completely unnecessary squeal of tires, and you collapse back against the seat with a ragged sigh of relief. Beside you, the driver smirks, eyes straight.

The back streets are narrow. While the man concentrates on navigating them, you concentrate on him. Good-looking guy, great car, nice clothes; the sunglasses alone are the tasteful, four-hundred-buck sort.

You remember the Big Mac crammed into your pocket, warm and squishy against your abdomen, and fish it out, swallowing hard against the saliva flooding your mouth. It's half-flattened and melted cheese is oozing out one side but you sink your teeth into it anyway. You can't tell if he's watching as you swallow, almost without chewing, and take another bite. In under a minute, all that's left of the hamburger is the greasy residue on your fingers, and you draw the line at licking them in hopes of catching a stray calorie or two.

"That why he was chasing you?" the driver asks, nodding at the empty wrapper crumpled on your lap. "You stole food?"

"I was hungry." You ball up the grease and ketchup-stained wrapper and roll it against your thigh. "Why'd you help me?"

He takes off his sunglasses and drops them onto the dashboard. "I saw you running."

The burger wrapper crinkles and you look down and see that your hands have begun to tremble. "Yeah well, I do a lotta that."

"Really. Ever break the sound barrier?"

"No," you say. "You can let me out here."

"You live here?" he asks, craning his neck to look at the rundown buildings on either side of the narrow street. Every city has slums like these, even the ones that call themselves progressive.

"Yeah, around," you lie.

The corner of his mouth quirks up but he keeps driving. Fuck. The passenger door isn't locked; you think you can wrench it open and jump out, hopefully not into the path of an oncoming bus or the side of a dumpster. Your hand inches towards the door handle; it's almost in your palm when he speaks again.

"You on something?" he asks.

The question catches you off-guard; your hand drops and you blink. "Huh?"

"Drugs –– are you using performance-enhancers?"

"No," you say, and this time it's the truth.

He nods and drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "Tell you what." He looks at you. "I've got an offer you might have a hard time refusing. How about we talk? "

 _Here it comes_ , you think, but that's all he says, apparently waiting for an answer. You worm your fingertips under your thighs and trap them between the slick car seat and your worn jeans in an attempt to hide the trembling, which is getting worse. _Fuck._ "Food first."

He glances at you and raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"Price of my company," you say. "You wanna talk, you gotta buy me a meal first."

He eyes you for a moment, then shrugs. "Sure, why not. We can eat at my place. You like pizza?" You nod. "It's a deal then," he says. "What's your name?"

Thinking clearly is getting harder, words floundering just outside your reach. You almost give him your real name, but catch yourself at the last second. "Bar – uh – Barry."

"Nice to meet you," he says with a grin. Then he says something else but the words only register as a low buzz of white noise. You slump back against the seat and watch his profile until the sounds coalesce into something understandable again.

You're not sure if you doze off in the car, everything becomes an out-of-focus haze; the driver's conversation and the low whir of the air conditioner and the rhythmic bounce of your head against the window when you prop your elbow on the sill and your cheek against your hand. When the car pulls up in front of a building in an upper-class neighborhood, you realize that at some point during the drive it had started to rain, and you hadn't even noticed.

"Are you sick?" he asks, helping you out of the elevator into the penthouse. "Hurt?"

"No."

He raises an eyebrow. "You sure it isn't drugs? Because this looks an awful lot like withdrawal to me."

"Man, what's with the third degree," you say, annoyed. "No drugs." You push him away and have to quickly reach for the door-frame to steady yourself.

The rattling in your sweatshirt pocket is audible when you sway into the door frame, and he cocks his head, eyes on the bulge in your sweatshirt.

"Give it here," he says, holding out his hand. When you just stare at him, he smiles dryly and snaps his fingers, hand still extended. "If we're gonna have a civil conversation, no secrets and no lying. Now c'mon, give."

You huff out an annoyed breath, reach into your pocket, and slap the pill bottle into his outstretched palm.

He reads the label, and then glances at you. "Glucose tablets."

You tuck your hands into your pockets and shrug, a minute rise-and-fall of your shoulders. "'m hypoglycemic, man. Can I have something to drink?"

The wrinkles between his eyebrows smooth out and he nods. "Sure. I'll order that pizza now. You think you can eat a whole one?"

You can't quite suppress a laugh at that, but it comes out strangled and borderline hysterical, and Mister Neighborly Concern is starting to look, well, concerned, so you swallow the tail end of the laugh and say, "Uh, how about six. Six is good. I'm, uh, really hungry."

You sit on the couch, resisting the urge to stretch out and fall asleep, while he goes into the kitchen and comes back with an opened beer and a glass of orange juice, which he hands to you. It's like trying to fill an empty reservoir up with an eyedropper, but at least it takes the edge off the brain fog. For a moment, as you hold the empty glass, fingers slipping on the condensation beading on the sides, you wonder if he drugged the juice. But even if he did, it'd wear off in a minute or two. And there's no way it could make you feel any worse than you feel right now. You lean forward and carefully put the glass on the table, wincing at the rattling as your hand trembles.

Your shirt is plastered between your shoulder-blades with sweat but you're shivering in the apartment's air-conditioning anyway. You wrap your arms around yourself and try to even out your racing heartbeat by breathing slowly. It doesn't do much good, but it keeps you relatively calm. It's been a while since you've been this low – fuck, you can't remember; it might have been all the way back right after the accident. It had been trial-and-error back then and you almost killed yourself a couple times. Stupid kid.

The pizza guy shows up and as he's leaving he says, "No problem, Mr. Queen."

"You're Oliver Queen?" you ask incredulously, and he gives you a weird look as he sets a stack of pizza boxes down on the coffee table and flips the top one open.

"Thought I told you that in the car."

Your gaze is fixed on the pizza, thick tomato sauce and airy looking crusts with blackened bits of cheese melted to them. "Musta missed it," you mumble, lunging forward and grabbing a slice with your free hand, your left arm still wrapped around your stomach. You count the boxes as you tear chunks off the slice with your teeth, gulping them down. "Eight?"

Oliver Queen watches you, looking bemused. "I figure you burn a lot of calories. Super-metabolism's a bitch."

You stop chewing and look at him. "Man, I dunno what you think you saw –"

"Look, I've met others like you." He leans forward, elbows braced against his knees, and looks at you earnestly. "People with powers. Trust me, super-speed's not the most surprising ability you could have. I work with a woman who can knock you flat on your ass with a sonic scream, for chrissakes."

"Okay," you say, finishing off the crust in two bites and reaching for another slice. "So I can run fast. What's it to you?

"Stealing dollar burgers seems kind of pathetic for someone with your abilities, if you ask me."

"No one's asking," you say through a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese. "And it's not like I had a choice."

"Maybe not. But I'm giving you a choice. A job offer."

"You know, if I took off right now, no way would you be able to catch me."

Oliver waits a couple seconds and then spreads his hands, palms up. "You're still here."

"Shoot."

"You know who Lex Luthor is?" Oliver asks.

You remember a blurry face atop a dark silhouette staring down at you, and a disembodied voice telling Hanison _he's just a kid, let him go_. "I've run into him before," you say.

Oliver leans back and balances his beer bottle on his knee, staring at you. " _Really_."

You shrug and almost unconsciously shift to mirror his position, pushing your spine against the leather until it creaks. "My line of work, meet a lot of interesting people."

" _Your_ line of work? You're a thief."

"Like I said, lotta interesting people. So, what, is this a business rivalry thing? You want me to steal Luthorcorp secrets? Little corporate espionage on behalf of Queen Industries?"

"Not exactly. If you know anything about Lex, you know he's involved in a lot of shady stuff. The thing we're … dealing with … is his latest venture. 33.1."

"Who's _we_ , man? Cuz I'm not part of anything yet. What's thirty-three point one?"

"It's a project with one purpose." He tilts his head, like he's trying to gauge the impact his next sentence will have on you. "Experimenting on people like you."

You think of Clark in Smallville, and how friendly Lex was with him. Clark can take care of himself … unless Lex gets his hands on some of that green rock, in which case Clark is screwed. "He got … uh … any test subjects yet?"

"We don't know. We can't access their computers. That's –"

"Where I come in, yeah, I get that. _Comprende_. I dunno much about computers."

Oliver smiles and tips his beer bottle up to get the last drops. "Well, I bet it won't take you very long to read up on them."

* * *

 **Note:** While this fic _is_ in second person, it's a stylistic choice for Bart Allen's voice, not 'interactive' or a choose-your-own-adventure, 'Y/N' fic.


End file.
